Ramos and Aiken: How artificial intelligence can improve health care

Policy debates over how to solve problems around access to family doctors, wait times for elective surgery, home care, transfer to long-term care, tracking the over-prescription of opioids and many other serious health dilemmas facing Canadians rarely consider the role artificial intelligence (AI) can and will play in offering solutions. But the potential to realize the benefits of AI requires a proactive policy strategy that is geared to the future rather than a reactive approach, constantly focused on managing current crises. This means solutions for tomorrow rather than today and also will require parsing out how to recognize, trade and access the commodity that drives the "gig economy" – data. The Fraser Institute warned that in the next decade Canada's doctor shortage will only worsen, largely because of an increase in the number retiring physicians that will not be replaced fast enough by new or foreign trained doctors. The Canadian Institute for Health Information found that although wait times are improving for hip surgery, they are getting worse for cataract surgery and are remaining constant for a number of other procedures.